Abstract [en]

It is possible to characterize the Swedish standardization praxis as very extensive. Standardizing institutions such as the Swedish Academy and the Language Council are occupied with pronunciation, orthography, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, without any formal restrictions. But there are several modifying factors. First, none of the standardizing institutions has a supreme position; misleading measures by one of them are corrected by the others. Second, the standard language norm does not seem to be a central battlefield of symbolic language conflicts in Sweden, in contrast to multilingualism. Third, it seems that most of the Swedes are well integrated in the speech community and easily identify themselves with the idea of the standard norm; thus they are linguistically self confident to question the standard, without disclaiming it. Fourth, the standardiser often leaves the writer some choice (with the exception of spelling). The causes and effects of this standardization praxis are discussed in the paper.